Whether they like it or not, Fontaines D.C. have been tasked with saving rock music.
It’s an honour (or burden) that’s been bestowed upon plenty of others across the years: The Strokes, The Ramones, Arctic Monkeys, Patti Smith, Green Day, and even, perplexingly, the nation of Sweden. Now, whispers are on the wind that it’s Fontaines D.C. who must carry the cumbersome torch.
While I’m not here to unpack the nuances of genre or dive into whether or not so-called ‘rock’ actually needs saving, it’s hard to deny the band’s impact. At a time when it felt like modern rock may have lost its way, Fontaines D.C. came out with Romance: their brightest and most accessible album yet, fusing echoes of classic Brit-rock cool with a sense of sanguine bleakness especially attuned to the current moment.
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The album sprung the Dublin five-piece from niche post-punk circles into the daylight, scoring them two Grammy nominations and sending their streaming numbers skyrocketing.
They even picked up some notable fans along the way: Harry Styles, Cillian Murphy and Florence Welch were among those spotted at gigs, Sir Elton John shouted them out as “the best band out there right now” and even Barack Obama showed support, adding the single Favourite to his annual playlist.
Nearing the top of the charts, the band are often the sole electric guitar-slingers nestled among titans of pop, country and hip-hop.
What’s most impressive is despite a stylistic swap from monochrome casualwear to more vibrant and outlandish aesthetics, not much else has changed. Their lyrics still blend cryptic anguish with breakthrough moments of sweetness.
Ominous riffage still builds into hooks of poppy euphoria – though perhaps a few more than they’ve offered before. It’s still the same five guys who came together at music school with the hopes of making something great.
Now, six months since the album’s release, drummer Tom Coll isn’t as overwhelmed by the mainstream attention as one might expect.
“The last album felt like a bit of a marked jump, I guess. Big time,” he laughs. “We’ve been doing the band for eight, nine years now, so it’s been a slow, gradual build-up as well. It feels like each album is one step.”
Smiling widely in a red Adidas sweatshirt, he recounts some of his best memories from the Romance rollout: a secret show in New York City, a set at Glastonbury and a huge hometown wrap-up show.
“I haven’t spent that much time in Ireland over the last few years,” he says (the band’s now based out of London), “so to spend five days and have the whole year end in a big Irish show was really, really special. It was lovely. All of our friends and family were there as well.”
The next step for the band involves a blitz through Japan, an Australian tour with stops at the Sydney Opera House and Golden Plains and a brand-new single, It’s Amazing To Be Young. In a similar vein as Favourite, the track is the first they’ve dropped since Romance and oozes a nostalgia-tingled sense of wonder.
“Carlos and Grian started writing it on a piano at Carlos’ house and it was around the time his baby girl was born,” Tom tells me. “It was a really heightened emotional time for him and for us – I feel like that bled into our lives so much as well. It was, like, seeing your friend become a dad for the first time. He was the first one of us to ever have a kid, so it was wild.”
It’s this sense of raw emotion and vulnerability that’s part of the larger appeal of the band. From the hammering debut single Starburster, penned by frontman Grian Chatten during a panic attack on the London tube, to the self-loathing dithering of Death Kink, Fontaines D.C. aren’t afraid to dredge up the ugly, the crude and the resentful, though they always leave room for beauty.
I ask Tom how he feels about being labelled such a serious band. “I don’t know,” he ponders. “I feel like we don’t take ourselves that seriously when we’re in a room together. A lot of us are very shy and I feel like we don’t really put much of ourselves out there and that’s sometimes mistaken as being very serious and aloof.
“From day one, we’ve always really taken art very seriously and always wanted to write the absolute best music that we can. We take that craft and that learning experience of doing that very seriously,” he says. “As people, not so much.”
As for the notion Fontaines D.C. are saving rock music, that’s something that doesn’t appear to be on his mind much at all. He’s just happy to have his friends by his side, together against the world.
“I’m a big fan of hip-hop and lots of solo singers and stuff like that – that’s amazing. But I feel like as an artist, I would hate to have all the pressure on just my shoulders. There’s something emotionally safe about being in a band as well, because you’re there, and you’re with your mates, and it’s like everyone’s doing it, you know?” he says.
“If it’s five of us in a room and we’re all in that creative space, something really special happens and stuff just falls out of us. It’s this really amazing thing knowing the lads for so long; it’s this special kind of creative spark. That’s what we bring.”
Get tickets to see Fontaines D.C. at the Palace Foreshore on March 8 and 10 here.
